Exporting an image profile as an ISO or offline bundle
The VMware PowerCLI session will not retain the image profile details upon its exit. If you need to preserve a customized profile that you created, you will have to export it as an offline bundle (ZIP or ISO). When you start a new VMware PowerCLI session, you can just add the offline bundle back to the software depot.
How to do it...
The following procedures will guide you through the steps required to export an image profile to an ISO or a ZIP archive:
- To export an existing image profile to an ISO, issue the following command:
Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "Profile001" –ExportToIso -FilePath C:\AutoDeploy-VIBS\Exported\Profile001.iso - To export an existing image profile to an offline bundle, issue the following command:
Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "Profile001" –ExportToBundle -FilePath C:\AutoDeploy-VIBS\Exported\Profile001.zip
How it works...
Exporting to an ISO is used when you want to use the customized ESXi image to build an ESXi host by booting off that ISO. The export to ZIP option is used if you want to use the customized image as an offline bundle. Keep in mind that only ZIP bundles can be imported as software depots into a PowerCLI session.